Yvonne Ridley argues that the desperate super-rich dinosaur rulers of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Arab world are prepared to go to any length, including fomenting sectarianism and discord, in order to maintain their grip on power.

Every time I sit down to write an article another expression of people power erupts somewhere within the Arab world, so it’s hard to know where to begin. The most exhilarating thing for me has been the unity displayed in these amazing popular movements; there’s been no room for sectarianism, sexism, ageism or any other ism. It truly has been all for one and one for all.

When I walked through Tahrir Square at the height of the Egyptian revolution and saw the spirit of brotherhood between Christians and Muslims with my own eyes, I was moved to tears. For years, the destructive regime of Hosni Mubarak had sought to keep the two faith communities apart and now there is sinister evidence from secret Ministry of Interior documents that it was Mubarak’s henchmen who planted bombs in Coptic churches to fuel the sectarianism that pitted Muslim against Christian. However, the Egyptian people broke free from such divisive tyranny and came together in a unity that transcended religions, cultures, gender and generations. This was a revolution for all, with no discrimination between people of faith and those of no faith...

Friday, March 11, 2011

"They cried lies to the truth when it came to them, and so they are in a state of confusion." (bal kadhdhabú bi-l haqqi lammá ja'á'ahum fa hum fí 'amrim-maríj). -Qur'an: 50(5)

The Qur'an is the heart of an ongoing conversation between God, His angel Jibríl, His prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings upon him), the original Muslim community, and the succession of communities of Muslims that have arisen in its wake. And at the heart of the Qur'an is a concern for truth, al-Haqq, which happens to be one of the names of God.

The Qur'an speaks of itself, alongside other revelations from God, as a furqán: a criterion or distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood (2:53, 2:185, 3:4, 8:29, 8:41, 21:48, 25:1). And it exposes the agony of the people of the lie -- the people who have chosen lies over truth. This agony is not theirs alone. Though the Qur'an's descriptions of hellfire aptly portray the excruciating torment to be experienced by the liars and truth-deniers, the people of truth, including the Prophet himself (saas) clearly suffer from the frustration and occasional futility of trying to bring truth to those who are in love with lies.

The Qur'an includes about 250 occurrences of words meaning "to lie," "liar," and so on, constructed from the Arabic root k-dh-b. One of the most common phrases, occurring about ten times, is: "Who does greater evil than he who lies (fabricates lies) against God?" (wa man 'adhlamu mimmani-f-tará 'ala-llahi kadhiban...") (6:21, 6:93, etc.)

The 9/11 false-flag attack was perhaps the greatest lie against God ever fabricated by human beings. It was designed to be blamed on pious Muslims, that is, people who fervently worship God and follow the message of God as revealed in the Qur'an. In truth, the attacks were carried out by the enemies of pious Muslims, the enemies of their Book -- in short, the enemies of God. By casting the Godly as diabolical, the diabolical falsely painted themselves as Godly: The day after 9/11, George W. Bush announced that he would lead "a monumental struggle of Good versus Evil," declared a "National Day of Prayer and Remembrance," and on September 14th sanctified the big lie of 9/11 with a de facto satanic mass in the National Cathedral, featuring Billy Graham, a rabbi, an imam, a cardinal, four ex-presidents, and members of Congress.* During this satanic mass, Bush - a notorious drug user, rumored pedophile and future war criminal who would later allegedly wire the White House so he could enjoy Abu Ghaib style sexual torture on live TV** - stated that he was going to "answer these attacks and rid the world of evil."

When discussing such people, the Qur'an uses the verb kadhdhaba (to cry lies to, to deny or reject the truth) more often than the simple verb kadhaba (to lie). In effect, kadhdhaba represents lying raised to an exponential power, told by a liar who compounds his lies by insisting that the truth-tellers are liars and that he, the liar, is telling the truth. Someone who is guilty of kadhdhaba is not just a liar, but a big liar. When faced with a profound and critically important truth -- a truth that reveals that the person's whole society and its dominant worldview is false and deeply corrupt -- the big liar scoffingly denies this profoundly important truth, and mendaciously calls its purveyors liars. That is what the big liars of Mecca and Medina did when faced with prophetic truth; and it is what the big liars of today do when faced with the truth about 9/11.

Several times, the Qur'an mentions the big liar who "cries lies and turns away" or "cries lies and turns his back" (kadhdhaba wa tawalla) (20:48, 75:32, 92:16, 96:13). That is, when the Prophet (saas) or one of his followers approached such a person with the profound truth of God--a truth that revealed the polytheistic plutocracy of Mecca to be deeply corrupt--the person couldn't handle the truth and turned away, figuratively or literally, from the truth-teller and from the truth itself. 9/11 truth activists face similar frustrations with the people of kadhdhaba wa tawalla.

What happens to the big liars and their lies? The Qur'an's answer: They and their civilizations are destroyed (26:139, etc.) by earthquake (29:37), fire (25:11, 32:20, 34:42), drowning (10:73), extinction (7:72), unspecified Divine punishment (6:49), and so on. Each big liar, and indeed every human being, will face a divine reckoning: "This is the Day of Decision, that you cried lies to" (37:21).

At some level we all know this. Yet we all lie to ourselves in various ways, to various degrees, to shield ourselves from the guilt of wrongdoing, great or small. Today, the American people, and others who have not stopped the genocidal wars of aggression launched by 9/11, try to hide their guilt from themselves and from God by crying lies to 9/11 truth: "None cries lies to it but every guilty aggressor" (83:12).

American culture may have inherited from Native Americans a love of simple truth***; but our leadership has generally reacted against this love of truth and made us over as a nation of liars and swindlers. Or perhaps it is the goodness and naiveté of the average American that has opened the door to psychopathic leadership. In any event, we are now a nation profoundly corrupted by lies, above all the big lie of 9/11.

"Do you make it your living to cry lies?" (56:82) If we Americans are honest, we must answer "yes." There may still be time for us to repent and turn back to truth.

* * *

*Discussed in Thierry Meyssan, 9/11: The Big Lie, 76-79, and David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor, xiv-xv.**Wayne Madsen Reports, May 29th-31st 2009, summarized in my book Questioning the War on Terror pp 15-16.*** Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance****Melville, The Confidence Man

Thursday, March 10, 2011

"That and the New Years Eve attack on the Coptic Church in Alexandria, which many were already speculating was an inside job (pointing to the lack of government interest in investigating a major attack) both appear to now be confirmed, at least assuming the documents are authentic (and all indications are that they are). The revelations will likely spark another call to move legally against regime leaders for their crimes." Jason Ditz, antiwar.com

Once again, several "outrageous conspiracy theories" have turned out to be true. Which raises the million-dollar question: If the American people stormed the White House, the Pentagon, CIA headquarters, and (above all) AIPAC and JINSA headquarters, and liberated the documents therein, might they find papers confirming what we already suspect about 9/11, based on the lack of government interest in investigating a major attack, among a great many other reasons? And is this what it would take to move legally against regime leaders for their crimes? If so, count me in - I'm ready to storm these places, and if necessary die while doing so, as soon as you-all are. -Kevin Barrett

Docs: Egypt Security Bombed Churches, Resort

Collection of Official Docs Reveals Various Mubarak-Era Crimes

by Jason Ditz, March 08, 201

Just days after the Egyptian protesters attacked the state’s internal security headquarters and rescued reems of documents about Mubarak-era crimes that were about to be destroyed http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41927204/ns/world_news-mideast/n_africa/, some of the dirtiest such deeds are starting to come to light. And even for the notorious Mubarak regime, they’re surprisingly bad.

Sex tapes, documents detailing broad surveillance of Egyptian dissidents and transcripts of telephone conversations between the dissenters and their family members, sure, but the biggest of what has come out so far reveals something far worse: official government involvement in the Alexandria church bombing and in a 2005 resort bombing.

Its the sort of allegation that would normally seem too extreme to have any credibility, but they’re detailed in official documents as absolute facts.The Sharm al-Sheikh terrorist attacks of July 2005 were blamed on local Bedouins, but the documents instead reveal they were plotted by Interior Minister Habib el-Adly to target a business rival of Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal.

That and the New Years Eve attack on the Coptic Church in Alexandria, which many were already speculating was an inside job (pointing to the lack of government interest in investigating a major attack) both appear to now be confirmed, at least assuming the documents are authentic (and all indications are that they are). The revelations will likely spark another call to move legally against regime leaders for their crimes.

CAIRO -- Less than a month after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's caretaker government faces a new crisis: what to do about thousands of documents that protesters seized from State Security Agency offices over the weekend.

The military-led interim authority has demanded that the classified files kept by Mubarak's dreaded internal spy agency be returned. Instead, they're being scattered throughout Egypt, with files turning up on Facebook and Twitter hourly, forcing the government to respond to them and raising fears among some activists that their value has been reduced for any future prosecutions for torture and kidnapping.

Some of what the documents contain is salacious and sinister.

One file includes a sex tape purportedly involving a Kuwaiti princess and a prominent Egyptian businessman. Another paints Egypt's highest-ranking cleric as a womanizer.

Israa Abdel Fattah, 32, a labor organizer and blogger, shared her file with McClatchy and marveled at the thoroughness of the surveillance. The file included detailed transcripts of e-mails sent from her Gmail account and phone conversations with her ex-husband. The feeling of violation was indescribable, she said.

"I knew they were watching me, but I never imagined they knew all this information about me," she said. "My friends tried to take me out to dinner that night. They tried to make me laugh, but I couldn't. I told them I should be alone, so I took my papers and went home."

Perhaps the most controversial document to surface was one that purports to lay out State Security's involvement in a church bombing on New Year's Day in Alexandria. The bombing killed 21 people and wounded 80, the worst violence against Egypt's Coptic Christian minority in more than a decade.

The legitimacy of the document hasn't been determined, but its distribution touched off protests Sunday in Cairo by hundreds of Coptic Christians.

Copts, especially those in Alexandria, had suspected state involvement in the bombing, noting that a stepped-up security force that was supposed to have protected the church had vanished before the bomb exploded.

According to the document, one of eight said to discuss attacks on churches, State Security used a jailed Islamist to help organize the plot, including details on the church's entrances and exits. The document was dated Dec. 2, 2010, and was addressed to the interior minister. It referred to the church bombing as "Mission No. 77."

Georgette Qilini, a Copt who served in the Egyptian parliament, said Mubarak's information minister ordered television stations to stop inviting her to speak after she suggested on the air that State Security was involved in the explosion.

"Maybe they were involved," Qilini said Monday. "We visited the church after the incident and we didn't believe the official story. There are still many, many questions, but I don't have any documents."

There are also several files that back State Security officers' reputation for torture. In one letter stamped "top secret" in 2008 and made available on Facebook, a senior official wrote that detainees suffered "injuries" while in State Security custody. He complained that questioning had to be delayed until the wounds had healed.

Questions abound. Why, for example, would such a serious plot as the church bombing be outlined in a document that was found so quickly? Why were some documents shredded and others not?

As Jesse Walker reported on Saturday, angry protesters stormed various State Security buildings throughout Egypt over the weekend after hearing reports that officials were destroying files that could shed light on various abuses over the years. While Human Rights Watch yearns for a "procedure" for publishing the documents that were saved from State Security's shredders, Egyptians opted for the WikiLeaks model. Scans of files have been appearing on Facebook and image hosting sites like Yfrog ("problematic," says HRW), and the Twitter hashtag #AmnDawla has been flooded with discussions and links to the documents since Friday.

Documents published so far, assuming they're real (and the Obama administration seems to be acting as if they are), have unearthed everything from Skype snooping to a whole room full of compromising sex tapes. But perhaps the most incendiary files posted have been those tying the Interior Ministry to attacks supposedly perpetrated by terrorists. Disgraced former Interior Minister Habib el-Adly had already been widely suspected of being involved in the New Year's Eve Coptic church bombing, but the appearance of a file on "Mission No. 77" seems to confirm regime critics' most damning accusations. McClatchy says that the document describes how State Security used a jailed Islamist to carry out the attack (which had been attributed to al-Qaeda), and, perhaps more ominously, they claim that there are at least seven more files on church attacks among the pilfered documents.

Aside from the New Year's Eve attack, which was already under scrutiny before the storming of State Security offices, the documents also point to a similar conclusion with regards an earlier bombing in the seaside resort of Sharm El-Sheikh. The 2005 attack, which killed 88 and was initially blamed on Bedouin terrorists, was actually a plot by el-Adly and Gamal Mubarak to get back at one of Gamal's business rivals, according to a leaked document (partial English translation here).

And beyond these two attacks documented in the leaked files, questions have been raised about the Nag Hammadi church attack in early 2010. The allegations were apparently serious enough that an Egyptian official felt the need to deny the rumors to American diplomats, while at the same time conceding that the official explanation for the attacks "doesn't seem to fit."

Up until now, claims of terrorism have been the most effective way for Arab dictators to get sympathy and support from the US. (The Yemeni regime, which is now teetering on the edge of collapse, saw its aid double after the Christmas 2009 attempted underwear bombing.) American policy in the region has been predicated on the Faustian bargain that we overlook Arab dictators' shoddy human rights record and continue to prop them up in exchange for stability and a hard line on Islamic terrorism. But the Egyptian State Security archives suggest that not only were the Mubaraks not delivering an end to Islamic radicalism, but the regime itself may have been the source of much of Egypt's terrorism and sectarian strife.

Egypt's new government warned on Wednesday of a "counter-revolution" following a series of deadly political and religious clashes blamed on diehards of the former regime.

The government said it "is fully committed to the interests of the people and to implementing the goals of the revolution; and it will stand firm against plans for a counter-revolution," according to state news agency MENA.

Meanwhile, the newly appointed cabinet met with the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to propose a law criminalising threatening behaviour, MENA said.

A statement later said the cabinet had discussed "developments in the country, specifically the acts that have hindered daily life, acts of thuggery, incitement, intimidation and tensions affecting national unity".

Accordingly, it has "ordered the swift return of police forces, in their full capacity, back to the streets" and "urged citizens to cooperate with the police".

On Tuesday, clashes killed at least 13 in Cairo, the health ministry said.

Bloody fighting broke out late on Tuesday in the working-class Cairo district of Moqattam when Muslims confronted Christians who had been blocking a main road in protest at the burning of a church last week in the provincial town of Sol, south of Cairo.

The attack on the church came after clashes between Copts and Muslims that left two people dead.

Father Boutros Roshdy of a Moqattam church said at least seven Coptic Christians were among the dead on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in Cairo's Tahrir Square, the epicentre of anti-regime protests that toppled president Hosni Mubarak, attackers armed with knives and machetes waded into hundreds of pro-democracy activists on Wednesday, witnesses said.

By early evening, the army had restored order in the square, dismantling tents pitched by protesters shortly after anti-regime riots erupted on January 25, and detaining several protesters, MENA said.

The violence, widely blamed on remnants of Mubarak's regime, revealed the security vacuum created by police, who disappeared from the streets during January protests that led to Mubarak's resignation. ...